Redhead
by pointlessmonster
Summary: On that dreadful morning, Meeks tried to soothe Todd with four words: "You can't explain it." Maybe he's speaking from prior experience. Maybe Steven Meeks has already lost a loved one to suicide.
1. Chapter 1

The walk from Mr. Nolan's office was quiet, frigid, and all too fast. Vermont's bone-chilling snow practically froze Meeks's hands, yet he felt anything but the cold nipping at his fingers.

Winter had brought an onslaught of problems that seemed to occupy every corner of his mind. But one took center-stage: Loss.

Neil's wake had been two days ago and he had initially felt the onset of tears. Now he wondered what Neil would want him to do— what Charlie would order him to do. What would happen to Mr. Keating? What had he done?

All his anxieties refused to stop as he climbed those once joyous stairs. He hears Knox and Todd's doors open in the corridor of the junior dorm as he enters with Hager. A small part of him wanted to wait in the hall after Hager had gone with Knox. Go to Todd's door and tell him that one day it wouldn't hurt so bad. Alas, he crept inside his room.

Pitts sat on the edge of his own bed staring out their cool, foggy window, deep in thought. He barely acknowledged Meeks. He's barely acknowledged anyone these past few days. His engaged gaze was now hazy. He kept his eyes down and back slouched. Now that he thought of it none of the Poets were themselves, especially Todd.

"Meeks?" Anderson's soft voice had been nothing but a whisper.

"Go away. I have to study." An excuse.

"What happened to Nuwanda?"

"Expelled." The word stabbed at his throat.

"What'd you say to them?"

"Nothing they didn't already know." The finality in his voice ended the conversation.

Meeks' bed let out a high-pitched creek under him. He stared at his low-hanging ceiling, and, in an instant, it seemed worlds away.

God dammit, he thought. He didn't know who to blame Mr. Perry was the first person that came to mind. Cameron was a close second. But Nolan, Nolan brought down the hammer that pinned them to the wall that Keating freed them from.

Hearing that Neil's death was no one's fault was as disheartening as hearing Brian's death was a long time coming. Neither were true, he believed.

How he wished for the days of study group and weekend cave meetings. When all he had to worry over were his grades, his friends, and his little gadget of a radio. When he was ever so content with what he had. Now he isn't so sure what he has. He held a desire to turn back time. When death seemed a bit less complicated.


	2. Chapter 2

The condolences, whispers, and tears meshed into one and seemed to fade as Steven peeked into the casket of Brian Meeks. Even in a room full of people he had never felt so alone. He had asked everyone there what had happened to his cousin. No one told the nine-year-old what had happened and eavesdropping hadn't helped either. He couldn't believe that Brian's now pale hands were the same ones that threw him a football on Thanksgiving mornings and gave him toys and bots on Christmas Eve.

He was nothing short of confused when his mom inched into his room in the wee hours of the morning. He remembered it perfectly. He was asleep then he wasn't, his mattress sinking slowly.

"I know it's early, baby," The first glimpse of dawn came through Steven's window and shone upon her like a guardian angel. "Your father had planned to tell you and your sisters in the morning, but I thought it best to tell you now. I know how close you were to him considering the number of girls in the family. And I wanted to tell you that…well... Brian's dead. He died last night."

This was the closest Steven's ever been to death considering his sheltered life in the suburbs of Vermont. Now, as he stood over the casket, he never would've guessed that death smelled like flowers and aftershave.

An old man strode up to the little boy and brushed his fingers over the polished mahogany. He put a radiant rose among the banquets of lilies and snapdragons.

"The last funeral I went to was your Grandmother's." His grandfather's rough Brooklyn accent spoke out. "She died before you were born, Stevie, but, man, was she a hell of a woman. She loved people, places, things, but she wanted to settle down with me of all men," He let out a heavy sigh. "Was I lucky?"

Was he? One of his grandchildren had died before his time and he was still here. He doubted he hadn't seen death at his age, but he acted so unfazed by all of this that Steven was shocked.

"Out of all coffins I've seen in my years, this hit the hardest. And to think I was used to this by now. Brian... he was a good man, but he had too many thoughts. He let them get to him. Sometimes, that happens to good men." The little redhead looked up at his Grandpa's sincere blue eyes. The man looked as if he had hundreds of stories hidden behind those eyes, but this one would be archived among memories of pain and loss beyond imagination. Steven never wanted to know how losing that much that fast felt, especially as the sharply dressed gravediggers lowered his cousin's remains six feet under.

The seasons changed slowly but surely until anyone thought to mention Brian again, Christmas becoming some sort of memorial for him for years. Why his parents couldn't tell Steven the reason was one thing but keeping the secret of the well-to-do family was another. For a while he thought it to be medical, maybe an undiagnosed disease, but soon he let the reason become phrases he had heard all too many times: "You'll learn when you're older."

"He wants us to pull the plug, James! I can't do that to my own father!" Steve could hear his mother's voice falter from his hideaway on the wooden banister. The bars creaked slightly as he crept towards the stairs above his father's study.

"What do you suppose we do? Spend more time and money on life support as he rots before our eyes?!" Her husband exclaimed quietly.

"Do you know how it felt to see him in that bed today? Do you how it felt to see him ready to tie a rope around his neck?" Her words gave way to muffled sobs yet she continued. "He said he 'wanted to leave as a good man, like Brian.'" The redhead froze as a forgotten wound tunneled its way through his chest. A shadow of realization hanging over his head.

He recounted sitting bundled up in the corner of the more than spacious hospital room. The spray of flowers and cards doing little to brighten the bleak quarters. His mother's voice spiked and fell for almost half an hour before she staggered to the car. An overwhelming wave of silence drowned Steven during their ride from the city to their little suburbia. As soon as she stepped outside of the station wagon she started playing pretend. Pretending that she hadn't seen the man that raised her decaying before her; pretending that the pack and a half of cigarettes on her dresser weren't all smoked in an afternoon. He knew once his father got home more than enough words would spill through her now pursed lips.

"Suicide?" The word had been at the back of Stevie's mind. "Peggy, you're jumping to conclusions. Sometimes, you just can't explain it. We'll figure this out." And with that the boy on the banister retreated into the darkness.


End file.
